The Reunion
by dharmamonkey
Summary: Booth and Brennan attend Booth's 25th high school reunion. Booth runs into an old girlfriend, who wants to rekindle the flame, and Brennan reacts accordingly.


**The Reunion**

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**By:** dharmamonkey  
**Rated:** M  
**Disclaimer:** _Hart Hanson owns _Bones_. But people like me who play in his sandbox give you all those delicious little moments that Hart and friends leave out. In this case, AU futurefics to take our minds off the Season 7 finale and the anxiety about what's to come in Season 8. That's why you read fanfic._

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**A/N****: **_This was inspired by a flyer I got in the mail this week advertising my twentieth high school reunion. (Yes, folks, the monkey is actually that old: three years younger than Booth, two years older than Brennan, if you're keeping track.) This is the result._

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I stood there in front of the mirror, tucking my shirttail into my slacks as I watched Bones fussing with the front of her black pencil skirt in the reflection behind me. She was muttering something inaudible under her breath as she smoothed over the fabric with her fingers, then reached up and tugged a little at her dark gray button-down blouse with fuschia pinstripes, adjusting it so that it billowed a little more over the waistband.

"Bones, baby," I said, turning around and fastening my belt buckle.

I'd brought my Cocky belt buckle and my heavy, embossed, antiqued brass U.S. Army Infantry one, and had been on the fence about which one to go with, but I decided to fly a little bit under radar tonight and go with the Army buckle.

"Bones," I said, sidling up behind her and kissing her temple. "You look great, baby. Seriously."

She turned her head and accepted my second kiss before her beautiful brow creased and her pursed lips turned to a frown. "What does 'party casual attire' mean anyway?" she asked. "That's so breathtakingly vague I don't know what they possibly—"

I chuckled and snaked my arms around her waist, then turned her around to look at herself in the mirror. "Bones," I whispered in her ear. "Do you see that? Do you see how you look? Gorgeous, alright? You look terrific. You're gonna be the best lookin' woman at this reunion. Every guy down there's gonna be pickin' his jaw up off the ground and wiping the drool off his chin when you walk in there, okay?"

Her eyes dropped down to her middle and her hands pulled mine away. "After two pregnancies, Booth, I just don't—"

My heart sank at hearing her talk this way. "Bones," I said. "Look up at me." She lifted her eyes and met mine in the mirror as I brought my hands back to her waist. "Listen, alright? I love your body. I love you, and I love your luscious body. I love it. These sweet little curves you have…" I let my fingertips stroke over the slight round of her belly, drawing my thumb across her navel. "I love 'em," I said, my voice dropping a little as I remembered how we'd barely closed the hotel room door behind us that afternoon before I was shimmying her out of her snug dark jeans and she was jerking my T-shirt out of my jeans, and how it seemed like a minor miracle we'd even managed to make it to the bed before I was inside of her. "This body of yours drives me as crazy today as it ever has, Bones." I nuzzled my nose into her hair and took a deep breath. "And you know that."

A faint smile flashed across her lips and she shrugged. "I guess so, Booth, and I love our girls, but—"

I turned her around and cupped her face in my palms and looked deep into her eyes—those amazing, soul-swallowing gray-green eyes of hers that have captivated me from the very first minute I saw her in that lecture hall at American. "I love you," I said. "I'm so proud to be able to come here to this reunion—the first one of mine I've ever gone to, Bones—and to be able to introduce you as my wife. And when people down there ask, as I know they will, if we have any kids, I'm gonna be damn near beside myself with excitement to tell 'em that you and I have two beautiful girls."

Her glimmering pale eyes flickered as her cheeks rose in a smile. "I guess so," she said, trying to hide that smile away as she rolled her lips between her teeth. "It's just that this is our first, you know, _event, _since Lucia was born, and I suppose I'm feeling a little uncertain about…" Her voice trailed off and her cheeks flushed a little.

I cocked my head to the side and threaded my fingers through her hair. "I know you are," I said gently. "But you've got nothin' to worry about, believe me." I thrust my hip into her, partly teasing but—well, who am I kidding?—mostly not, and said, "If we weren't already running a little late for the cocktail reception, I'd gladly show you exactly why you still drive me crazy, but since I don't want to give you that little offer of proof in the form of a quickie, how 'bout we save that for tonight after dinner and dancing?"

Bones arched her eyebrow, shot me that crooked half-grin of hers that just about unwound me every damn time she did it, and raised herself on the tips of her toes as she gave me a sweet little kiss, the kind where her tongue toys with mine for the briefest fleeting second before she pulls away again, pausing only for a moment to suck on my bottom lip. God, I love it when she does that.

I was about to pull her in for another kiss when her cell phone rang. I could tell by the ring tone, "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," that it was Angela. It's funny. It took years for Bones to even be willing to listen to that song after I got shot at the Checkerbox, but after Christine was born, something somehow clicked for her, and she was able to let go of the last bit of pain she'd hung onto about that whole experience. Since then, it's been her ring tone for Angela, who'd offered to have her and Hodgins take care of the girls for the weekend while we were up in Philly for my reunion. I narrowed my eyes and watched as Bones answered.

"Ange, is everything okay?" she asked. "Is Lucia—?"

Lucia, who just turned six months old, was still nursing but was usually good about taking a bottle when Bones wasn't around to feed her. We were lucky with our girls—both of them were pretty easy, although Lucia spoiled us, sleeping through the night at eight weeks while her older sister didn't manage that feat until she was about six months old.

"Oh, Christine," Bones said. Our older daughter was two and a half, and definitely pulling out all the stops as she worked her way through her terrible twos. Bones frowned and shot me a look of exasperation. "Yes, put her on the phone."

She sighed. "Christine won't go down for a nap," she explained. "She wants me."

After Bones came back after skipping town with Christine to evade arrest on the charge of murdering Ethan Sawyer, it became obvious to me that our daughter had been deeply affected by the experience. Bones thinks I'm crazy, and insists that Christine was too young to have any real memory of that time, and maybe she's right, but my gut tells me that somehow, for reasons that maybe don't make any rational sense, that experience—of being in my arms one minute, and being separated from me for four months the next—left a very real psychic impression on our little girl. Since the two of them came back, Christine has shown all the signs of separation anxiety. It's been a huge problem at the daycare, and sure, it's getting better—it's been a year and a half now—but still, from time to time, when Bones and I both go away, Christine doesn't handle it well at all. And the thing is, there's nothing I can do about it, because when she gets this way, the only one she wants is her mama.

"Booth," she said, the moisture welling up in her eyes again as she listened to Angela on the other end of the line trying to set Christine up with the phone. "This is probably going to take a while. Why don't you go ahead and go down there? As soon as I get Christine situated again, I'll join you."

I took a deep breath. "Okay," I said as I gave her a kiss, letting my lips linger on hers as Angela's and Christine's voices chirped quietly from her phone's earpiece.

"I'll see you down there in a bit, Booth," she said as I checked my hair in the mirror one last time.

I nodded. "Tell Christine that Daddy loves her," I said, then closed the door behind me.

* * *

I walked up to the table in the hotel lobby underneath the "South Philadelphia High School Class of 1989 25th Reunion" banner. At the table were two of my classmates, one of whom, Jacki Marshall, I vaguely recognized—I remember getting disapproving looks from her in chemistry class when I'd hit on her lab partner—and the other one, a guy, I didn't recognize at all.

"Hi," I said to the woman. "I'm Seeley Booth."

"Oh!" she said with a wide smile. "Seeley! It's so nice to see you again after all these years."

"Thanks," I said. She had never been that happy to see me all those years ago. In fact, I'm pretty sure she thought I was a jerk, which maybe I was, giving her the old brush off at the lab table as I made my move for her lab partner. Jacki handed me a sticker with the school colors (black and red) with my name printed on it. "Umm, my wife's here, too—we registered as a couple—but she's upstairs. Can I go ahead and get her name-tag, too?"

Jacki's eyebrows furrowed a little as she scanned the table for Bones' name tag. She shook her head. "I don't see it. Are you sure you—?"

"Her name is Temperance Brennan," I said, leaning over the table and scanning the rows of nametags myself. "There it is." I reached over, grabbed it and looked at it for a minute. It had her name in big print, with my name below it in smaller letters. For some reason, that made me smile. "So," I said to Anthony Coates, the African-American guy next to Jacki as I slid Bones' nametag into the inside pocket of my sportcoat. "Party's in there, huh?"

"Yeah," he replied.

"Nice seein' ya again, Seeley," Jacki said. I acknowledged them both with a slight jerk of my chin and walked into the restaurant, making a quick beeline to the bar.

It's strange, I guess, because I'm normally pretty comfortable in social situations like this, but for some reason, I found myself feeling very anxious about this one. Maybe it wasn't really the situation itself as much as the fact that my mind was still grinding away thinking about our little one Christine, and how miserable she was—and how miserable I know she was making poor Angela and Hodgins. And then Bones, of course, who, while she continues to maintain that Christine's separation anxiety is developmentally normal—which it is, up to a point—I think that somewhere, deep down inside that she's not even willing to admit to herself never mind me, she knows that it's at least possible that some of what we're dealing with today with Christine's behavior may at least in part trace back to what happened when she was just a few months old.

I needed a drink, just to loosen up and dull the buzzing in my head, so I strode up to the bar. Greeting the bartender with a jerk of my chin, I ordered a double Jamesons neat, grinning a little at the thought that Hodgins had started to convert me from a Scotch drinker into an Irish whiskey drinker. Accepting the drink from the bartender, I slid a ten dollar bill across the bar and gave him a thumb's up, indicating that I needed no change back. I raised the glass to my mouth and took a big whiff, letting the fragrant vapors of the whiskey work their way up into my nose before tipping it back for a sip. _Ahhhh. _I squinted my eyes a little as the vapor worked its way into my sinuses from the back of my throat. _Whew, _I thought. _Yowzah. _I took another long sip and set my glass on the bar as I surveyed the milling crowd in the restaurant. I saw a few faces I vaguely recognized. Twenty-five years is a long friggin' time, and it was funny to see how some people changed very little in their appearance and some, well, quite a bit more—but still I hung back. I wondered whether I looked more or less like I'd looked when I was seventeen, eighteen years old. Hell, at least I have all of my hair, and it's not gray yet—just a couple of stray grays by my sideburns, which is no biggie as long as you ignore the gray whiskers on my chin, okay?—and I'm still in pretty good shape.

I was staring at the crowd and putzing with my whiskey glass when someone walked up behind me and ordered a drink. I stepped forward and turned around.

"Can I get a Pinot Grigio, please?" a short, slender blonde asked the bartender.

I recognized the eyes first—the eyes and the lips, to be honest—but, doubting myself, I glanced down at her nametag and then back up at her eyes before she turned her head to acknowledge me.

"Seeley Booth?" she asked me, her eyes flipping down to my nametag and back up again.

"Jen Watson?" I choked, surprised that, of all people, she'd be the first one I'd run into at the reunion.

Her voice was a little lower than I'd remembered it, the reason for which made sense when I looked again at her lips, this time noticing the starburst of fine winkles around her mouth that told me she had spent the last twenty-five years as a pack-a-day smoker. I thought about the last time I'd seen her smoke.

"_This is your car?" she asked as I opened the door for her. _

"_Yeah," I said proudly. I'd delivered papers for three years, saving up every dollar I'd made to buy that car and fix it up. _ _Every goddamn morning I'd get my ass out of bed, no matter how tired I was, and rode my bike up and down 24th Street from Bainbridge up to Walnut and down 23rd again, flinging copies of the Philadelphia Inquirer._

"_What kind of car is it?" she'd asked. _

"_It's a 1970 Chevelle," I told her. Then, being the stupid teenage boy that I was, I gushed about its features to a girl who really couldn't have given a crap about the details. "Yeah, it's got the 'LS6' big block engine—454.2 cubic inches of amazing American goodness with a 4.251 inch bore and 4 inch stroke. You know, 450 horsepower." She stared at me with sort of a blank look until I mentioned the four-inch stroke, which I realized later she took to mean something entirely different than, well, I had at the time I'd said it. "I painted her with the Castilian Bronze Metallic paint matching the original 1970 GM colors."_

"_It's nice," she said with a sly grin as I climbed in on the driver's side. She slid across the bench seat and pressed her hip snug up against mine as I turned the key and let the engine roar to life. I could feel a hum run up and down my leg, and it took a minute to realize it was as much her fingers snaking over my thigh and up towards my crotch as it was the huge V8 engine vibrating through the pedal. _

"_Thanks," I squeaked as my gut clenched at her touch and I felt myself getting hard before I'd even pulled away from the curb. _

Then she swiveled her head around and looked at me.

"Actually," she said with a strange grin, "it's Green now. I just got divorced, but haven't changed my name back." The bartender came back with a sweating glass of straw-colored wine.

"I'm sorry," I said, shaking my head a little as I tried to jettison the image from my mind.

"About my name change?" she said with a faint snicker. "Or my divorce?" My mouth opened but she waved her hand and laughed. "It's okay, really." She lifted the glass to her lips and took a sip, then set the glass down on the bar, twirling the stem between her fingers as she drew the index finger of her other hand along the bar's varnished wooded edge. "You look great, Seeley," she said to me, reaching over and touching my hand as I reached for my whiskey. "What have you been up to all these years?"

I moved my hand away from hers—luckily she was standing to my left—and glanced at my watch. _Come on, Bones, _I thought. _Where are you? _

"Well, uhh," I stammered, unnerved by the way she was looking at me and the way she kept twirling the stem of her wine glass between her fingers like that. "I had that basketball scholarship to Penn State," I explained. "But I blew out my rotator cuff at the end of my freshman season, and I never got my jump shot back the way it was before. I lost my scholarship. So I dropped out of Penn State, and joined the Army. Stayed in the Army a while, then joined the FBI."

I took another sip of my whiskey, my nostrils flaring as the liquor burned on its way down my throat.

"Wow," she said. "That's really great."

"Umm, thanks," I replied awkwardly. I set my drink back on the bar and raised my eyebrows as I watched Jen's fingers stroke down the length of her glass's stem.

_I had my jeans halfway down my calves when I realized I needed to get to my wallet. Reaching around as I knelt between her thighs, I yanked my wallet out and pulled the foil packet out of the billfold, then let the wallet tumble to the floor. Her hands skated over the edge of my thigh and up to my hip, then she reached over and snatched the packet out of my hand. She tore it open with practiced fingers, threw the empty foil wrapper to the side and used those same practiced fingers to roll the rubber on me._

I felt my cheeks blush and my ears getting hot. _Where are you, Bones? _I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone, half-expecting and half-praying that she'd sent me a text. _Fuck. _I couldn't believe the nerve this woman had. I was a married man, for God's sakes. I felt her hand slither over mine again and that's when I realized it. _Oh fuck. _I knew I'd forgotten something. I'd just finished putting gel in my hair and was getting dressed when Angela called. As soon as I realized it, I could see it sitting there on the top of the dresser in the room, next to the TV. No wonder she didn't take a hint. I left it in the room. The hint, that is. _My wedding band._

_Fuck._

Quite sure in that moment that I was truly bereft of any sort of divine providence, I looked around the room for someone, anyone, who I recognized, because I had to get away from that damn bar, immediately if not sooner. I was scanning the room, my eyes searching the far edge of the room along the window for a friendly face—or even a neutral one who I could shanghai into rescuing me from my present fix—when I felt a pair of warm, slender fingers slip under my sportcoat and along the edge of the waistband of my slacks. I nearly jumped out of my skin as those fingers skimmed over my belly to the plaquet of my shirt, diving between the two buttons just above my belt buckle and touching my skin.

"Oh!" I gasped as I swung my head around at the unexpected contact.

"Booth," Bones crooned as her breath tickled my ear, her voice low and velvety in a way I had seldom heard outside of our bedroom.

As I turned around to face her, she hooked her thumb under my belt and pulled my hips to hers, then covered my mouth with hers in a crushing kiss. Given a moment to recover from the surprise, I opened my mouth to her and felt her warm, sweet tongue slide between my lips and meet my own in a deep, if brief kiss. My brain suddenly swirled in a gush of desire—the same way her kiss always made me feel—and I pressed in, trying to draw her tongue back to mine, but she refused, her lips grasping at mine one last time before she pulled away altogether.

"Bones," I murmured as our lips parted.

"You forgot something," she said, grabbing my hand from where I'd perched it on my hip, and she slipped my wedding ring into my palm. Then she turned to Jen Watson—or Green, or whatever her name was at the moment—with a lopsided smile, that wicked half-grin that I'd seen a hundred times and which made my balls hitch a little every time I saw it. Bones and Jen held each others' gaze for what seemed like a while, but was probably only a second or two, before Bones turned to me with a narrow-eyed glare and a vague pursing of her lips.

"Oh," I blurted awkwardly. "Jen, this is my wife—Temperance Brennan. Bones, this is Jen, umm…"

"Green," Jen said, her voice suddenly pinched and crestfallen in a way that made Bones' gray-green eyes light up and the corners of her lips curve up into a toothy smile.

"Nice to meet you," Bones said, letting her hand fall from my hip and extending it to Jen, who hesitated before shaking it limply. Turning to me again, she said, "The girls are fine, Booth. Christine just needed a bit of a—how would you call it?—a pep talk. Angela's giving them their baths and then they're all going to watch _The Land Before Time _before she puts them to bed."

I couldn't help but smirk. After all the years of hearing Bones squintify my behavior and call me an alpha male, here she was, executing an absolutely brilliant tactical strike, marking her territory and letting this other woman know that she was the alpha female and that I was hers. And if there was anything, I mean _anything, _that could have made me want to yank her out of that bar and drag her upstairs so we could fuck each others' goddamn brains out until neither of us even knew our own names, well…

It was_ that_.

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**A/N: **_Possibly not the ending you were expecting. Sorry, folks. This one was M but not because I gave you smut. Worry not. You'll have some very nice Dharmasera smut coming up very soon. A couple nice wads of Dharmasera hotness are on tap this week—including "Making Him Beg" (the next oneshot in our Angel/Bones crossover series) and the much-awaited Chapter 8 of "Inquisitor"—so you'll be alright..._ *grin* _ But this one had been percolating in the monkeybrain and gushed out in the wake of me receiving that flyer for my 20th high school reunion. I hope you enjoyed this Boothy trip down memory lane._

_Let me know what you thought of this. P__ut that very nice, new and improved and bright-and-oh-so-sparkly review button to good use._

_Yeah, that's it. That button down there. You know the one. Yes, that one. Give it a go._

_Thanks!_


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